What they had, though, was something very different -- an eclectic collection of World War II memorabilia that had been displayed in the Anne Frank Center in New York and was about to be shipped to the WWII Museum in New Orleans.

Guy Boyer, who died in 1997, had been an Army engineer with a habit of picking up odds and ends as he went about his job -- pins, coins, paper money, flags and armbands. He didn't show it much when he got home, but his daughter discovered it after he died.